Francine Segan is a food historian with a taste for the Renaissance. She’s the author of six cookbooks, including Shakespeare’s Kitchen (2003) and the Opera Lover’s Cookbook, which was nominated for a James Beard award. This year she’s been spending a lot of time in Italy researching 16th- and 17th-century Italian recipes. We caught up… Continue Reading »
Did you pick up a souvenir X-wing figurine for the opening of Rogue One last night? Maybe you’re getting a tie-in edition of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for Christmas this year, or a poster from the Ghostbusters remake. In 1948, you might have eagerly awaited this book of characters and scenery reproduced from… Continue Reading »
If you’re going to see a performance of The Winter’s Tale, perhaps you’ve read the play (or maybe just the plot summary)—or maybe you’re going in cold. So, what should you look for in this Shakespeare play? What should you pay particular attention to? We asked this question to directors at four of our theater partners across… Continue Reading »
Shakespeare has provided rich material for Hollywood’s film industry over the decades, from The Taming of the Shrew (1967) with Elizabeth Taylor to 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) with Julia Stiles. Given this, an exhibition about Shakespeare in America (and especially in California), such as the one on display at the Los Angeles… Continue Reading »
Theater was explosively popular in California’s Gold Rush era, and miners couldn’t get enough of Shakespeare. San Francisco and Sacramento had major theaters that were repeatedly burning down and being rebuilt almost immediately. Even the small gold-mining towns had stages or some kind of performance space. Actors followed the money, first to California, then traveling… Continue Reading »
Folger copy 54 of the First Folio, which traveled to Hawaii and California during the First Folio national tour in 2016, passed through the hands of many generations of one family for over 250 years before Henry Folger bought it in 1913. One of its nineteenth-century owners, Captain Charles Hutchinson, clearly valued the book as… Continue Reading »
